'Hatchet II' doesn't cut it

Roger Moore, Tribune Newspapers

There are aficionados who harbor a taste for a particular sort of horror movie — the gorier and cheaper, the better. They howl in appreciation of every inventive way filmmakers come up with to dispatch the victims in their slaughterhouse, cackle at the face shoved into the outboard motor propeller, giggle with glee at what a power sander might do to a human scalp and are tickled at every audio cue that yes, that's a chainsaw, revving up.

And though it may confound psychologists, these communal bloodlettings appear to be nothing more dangerous than a silly slice-and-dice release. Fans aren't being converted, en masse, into serial killers.

But no, such fans are never, ever dating my daughters.

These aficionados will know "Hatchet," a Z-grade/no-budget slasher picture from 2006 starring one-time "Friday the 13th" villain Kane Hodder. And it is for them that "Hatchet II" — with its chainsaw chopping, outboard motor beheadings, entrails yanked out and hatchet attacks — was made. Not for me.

" Adam Green's Hatchet II" — he puts his name over the title in the opening as if he's worried somebody else will take credit — picks up where the first film left off, with a sole survivor, Mary Beth ( Danielle Harris replaces Tamara Feldman) stumbling out of Honey Island Swamp and back into New Orleans, where she seeks answers from Reverend Zombie, played by "Candyman's" Tony Todd.

For reasons too absurd to list, she persuades the Reverend to round up a posse to follow her back into the swamp to recover those murdered on the tour boat in the first film. Mary Beth vows to kill the murderous "ghost" of the swamp, Victor Crowley. The voodoo reverend is only too happy to help.

"They say that on the day Victor Crowley was born, the swamp mourned," Todd recites from the script by Adam Green.

Naturally, 11 assorted gun nuts and rednecks scatter in the swamp after dark where they can bond, gator hunt, have rough swamp sex and get picked off by the deformed man mountain, Crowley (Kane Hodder).

About the swamp sex, yes, Alexis Peters (as Avery, oddly out of place with this crew) had a topless scene written into her contract. By Adam Green.

We don't care about any of the characters. They're just video-game obstacles to be dispatched as graphically as possible. I had no idea Todd was as big as he is, which keeps people from making fun of his fake Louisiana accent. Hodder is as good a lurching, wordless beast as ever there was. And I am amazed at how much more realistic fake intestines have become in the years since "Scream."

Anyway, you know what's going to happen — we all know what's going to happen — and a lot of it involves hatchets and guns that jam and guys vomiting or wetting their pants. If this is your sort of thing, have at it. I'm just relieved I don't have to say, "Don't try this at home." Or do I?